Transportation

Review: The Impending World Energy Mess by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling

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In The Maltese Falcon a character tells detective Sam Spade, “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are! Yes, sir, there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”* I’m telling Bob Hirsch the same thing. There’s no denying the man’s considerable credentials within the energy industry, nor his contribution to peak oil scholarship as principal author of the first major U.S. government report to take the issue seriously. But neither is there any predicting what outlandish thing he’ll propose next in his efforts to spread the message.

Observations on local governments’ preparedness for fuel supply disruptions

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In the wake of the oil supply shocks of the 1970s, the U.S. DOT encouraged the development of regional transportation energy contingency plans. But by the early 1980s, regional and local governments stopped developing transportation energy contingency plans as the threat of fuel supply disruptions diminished, as funding and support for the development of these plans discontinued, and as other more pressing issues emerged. Nearly 30 years later, there are warnings that we are again at risk for potential fuel shortages.

Book excerpt: “An American Citizen’s Guide to an Oil-Free Economy” (Chapter 1: Electrified and improved railroads)

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This “how-to” manual is intended to help Americans effectively and efficiently address a wide variety of problems that now loom darkly on the horizon. The various chapters will help create a viable, resilient and sustainable oil-free transportation and economic system that can operate in parallel with our existing petroleum based system. These plans all rely on mature, proven and economically viable technologies and not the current “Hunt for Miracles” that Secretary of Energy Chu has so aptly described his department’s Advanced Projects Research.

An oil-free transportation system effectively addresses the single greatest strategic threat to the national security of the United States of America — the possibility and indeed probability that “one day” we will no longer be able to import and produce enough oil to keep our economy, our society and eventually our military functioning properly.

Peak Moment 182: Changing the world one bike rider at a time

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A weekly free bike coop where you can use mechanic’s tools and expertise to fix your bike? Free clinics where schoolkids or neighbors learn to maintain or build their own bikes from used parts? While Chauncey and Dash Tudhope-Locklear make a living repairing bicycles, volunteer projects support their mission of empowering “social change through bicycles.” With an eye to local food self-reliance, they even repair farmers’ bicycles for free.